Archive for the ‘toys’ Tag

I had quite a few Star Wars action figures growing up. I even had two of a few of them – Han Solo in his Endor gear, Darth Vader, and Wicket. But my favorite figure was R2-D2. It wasn’t exactly an accurate figure, but there was something about it that seemed almost… friendly.

The Monster Kits were molds to make a monster and either Living Ice or Monster Flesh to put into the mold. The Monster Flesh was a lot like silly putty, and the Living Ice was a transparent rubbery substance.

Dissect-an-Alien was a plastic alien with a torso of clear, flexible plastic. It came with twelve plastic “organs” and “alien blood”, which was really glow-in-the-dark slime. The challenge was not in getting the parts out, it was in getting them to fit back inside the alien when you were finished.

The Monster Lab came with a water tank, two plastic skeletons, “Monster Flesh” and “Flesh Dissolving Compound”. You would put the “flesh” onto the skeleton, fill the tank with water, dump in the dissolving compound, then put your newly-created creature into the tank and watch the flesh fall off his bones.

Flipsiders were a series of games disguised as audio cassettes. With a flip of the wrist the game board would slide out of the bottom and unfold. The magnetic game pieces were stored in a compartment at the top of the cassette, and there was a spring-loaded switch which when pulled back and released would spin two gears in the place of the tape reels. Those gears had numbers on them and were used in place of dice. I had a few Flipsiders, but my favorite was Dragon Master.

MadBalls were a series of rubber balls with crazy and sometimes disgusting faces. After the initial series of balls, there was a series of figures released. The figures had a plastic body and a post for the rubber ball head to sit on. The hole in the head had a spring in it, and when you pressed a button on the back of the figure’s torso the head would pop off. I had a mummy figure called Dust Brain, and I thought he was pretty cool.